he offer to harm you, and unless I am mistaken he left
a very substantial memento of his friendship outside the cabin door
last night, for I just found the carcass of a wild boar there as I came
out."

From then on scarcely a day passed that did not bring its offering of
game or other food. Sometimes it was a young deer, again a quantity of
strange, cooked food--cassava cakes pilfered from the village of
Mbonga--or a boar, or leopard, and once a lion.

Tarzan derived the greatest pleasure of his life in hunting meat for
these strangers. It seemed to him that no pleasure on earth could
compare with laboring for the welfare and protection of the beautiful
white girl.

Some day he would venture into the camp in daylight and talk with these
people through the medium of the little bugs which were familiar to
them and to Tarzan.

But he found it difficult to overcome the timidity of the wild thing of
the forest, and so day followed day without seeing a fulfillment of his
good intentions.

The party in the camp, emboldened by familiarity, wandered farther and
yet farther into the jungle in search of nuts and fruit.

Scarcely a day passed that did not find Professor Porter straying in
his preoccupied indifference toward the jaws of death. Mr. Samuel T.
Philander, never what one might call robust, was worn to the shadow of
a shadow through the ceaseless worry and mental distraction resultant
from his Herculean efforts to safeguard the professor.

A month passed. Tarzan had finally determined to visit the camp by
daylight.

It was early afternoon. Clayton had wandered to the point at the
harbor's mouth to look for passing vessels. Here he kept a great mass
of wood, high piled, ready to be ignited as a signal should a steamer
or a sail top the far horizon.

Professor Porter was wandering along the beach south of the camp with
Mr. Philander at his elbow, urging him to turn his steps back before
the two became again the sport of some savage beast.

The others gone, Jane and Esmeralda had wandered into the jungle to
gather fruit, and in their search were led farther and farther from the
cabin.

Tarzan waited in silence before the door of the little house until they
should return. His thoughts were of the beautiful white girl. They
were always of her now. He wondered if she would fear him, and the
thought all but caused him to relinquish his plan.

He was rapidly becoming impatient for her return, that he migh